I've seen tons of pics on this site that show a lot of "foam" at the top of a carboy. I've only done a few batches using a carboy (vs. a bucket), and I don't remember seeing that. I always have the junk at the bottom but not the top. Should I be concerned?

The amount of krauesen depends mostly on the yeast. It's likely the yeast strains you are using simply do not generate that much. If your beer is fermenting as it should then I wouldn't worry about it.

I haven't done that yet. Do you just xfer the secondary to keg/bottle and dump a fresh cooled wort into the just used secondary?

Generally you don't want to do it with the yeast from the secondary fermenter. I've done it before but those tend to be the least flocculant yeast so your next beer probably won't clear as well. Normally you would rack your primary when it was ready (into secondary/keg/bottle) and then rack your new cooled wort right on top. Then wait for the boom, blow-off tube is required.

Generally you don't want to do it with the yeast from the secondary fermenter. I've done it before but those tend to be the least flocculant yeast so your next beer probably won't clear as well. Normally you would rack your primary when it was ready (into secondary/keg/bottle) and then rack your new cooled wort right on top. Then wait for the boom, blow-off tube is required.

Thanks! I love one particular recipe/strain but wasn't ready to start culturing. This will save me some $$$ on yeast and shorten my cycle. How many generations can you safely re-pitch like this?

Thanks! I love one particular recipe/strain but wasn't ready to start culturing. This will save me some $$$ on yeast and shorten my cycle. How many generations can you safely re-pitch like this?

Personally I've never gone above 3, I think if you want to go higher than that you should think about doing some yeast washing (wiki has more info) because of the amount of break material and trub that will have built up by that point.

I just spent the last three hours cleaning up after the "BIG BOOM" I would recomend if your going to do this maybe pour off about half the yeast cake. I opened up my fermenting fridge and it was completly full of foam I couldn't even see the buckets there was that much foam. I wasent aware of the blow off tube requirments not that it would have mattered it was an explosion that was out of this world. this was my first and last time pitching on a yeast cake.
JJ

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I just spent the last three hours cleaning up after the "BIG BOOM" I would recomend if your going to do this maybe pour off about half the yeast cake. I opened up my fermenting fridge and it was completly full of foam I couldn't even see the buckets there was that much foam. I wasent aware of the blow off tube requirments not that it would have mattered it was an explosion that was out of this world. this was my first and last time pitching on a yeast cake.
JJ